


A Lot of Work Ahead of Them

by suckitdomitian



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-22
Updated: 2014-09-22
Packaged: 2018-02-18 08:33:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2341862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suckitdomitian/pseuds/suckitdomitian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Two women stand on the precipice of change, one looking at a bright new future and another looking at the ashes of the old.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Lot of Work Ahead of Them

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LookingForOctober](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LookingForOctober/gifts).



_We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us and not a lot of resources to manage it with._

Separated by more than half a century, two women stand at the threshold of the same building and have the exact same thought.  One looks up at the shining, the new, the untapped potential; the other looks at the smoldering ruins of what once was. Their first building, their last stand, and as one watches a memorial be erected, the other traces a hand over its remains.

The Walls of Valor had never meant much to Natasha. Names of the dead etched in marble, a secondary tombstone or a first for those who were never found, that was all they had been, but seeing the first one, the oldest one, in pieces was more than even she could take. Regimes fall every day, but they always leave scars.

Scars that start early on, cutting their way through the heart of an organization, creeping their way in and making the roots early. Peggy can see the threats, but she had her orders. Salvage as many scientists as she can, any and all willing to switch sides, because other than Stark, we simply don’t have the ingenuity to compete. And better we get them than the Russians. Peggy’s not so sure it would be better. This has the potential to go so horribly wrong, and they’re inviting it in.

Natasha sees the aftermath. She stands in the midst of it, fallen giants on either side, and mourns. It has been a long time since she’s felt the need or the urge to mourn something more than a single individual. The lives lost here, at the Triskelion, at the Treehouse, at the Fridge, it’s an immense toll. But more than that, it’s the loss of a home, of security, of the only certainty that she’s ever known in her life. And now she has to rebuild, find the pieces and the patience, a way to strive through the heat that is bound to come down on her head. The Congressional Hearing was child’s play compared to what she was going to come up against.

3 PM meeting with Congress, 5 PM meeting with the Stark Industries board. Neither were particularly thrilled with the idea of the SSR going independent. There had been expectations, hopes, that after the war, their resources would fold right back into the government or that they would be incorporated into the next generation of consumer products. No one likes the idea of them using their innovations to help people, to defend against the burgeoning HYDRAs before war becomes a necessity. For all their talk of peace, governments like war, and the idea of having a stop-gap to prevent it, one that they can’t exploit, doesn’t sit well with them. Peggy expects that she’ll have to make some compromises, allow them a modicum of control over their actions even if she doesn’t like the idea, but in the end, they will still be the ones with the final say.

The World Security Council, what remained of it, were looking for answers, some explanation as to how this could happen under their watch, and all Natasha could say was that they didn’t look close enough, none of them looked close enough, but there wasn’t anything they could do about it now. SHIELD had fallen, and HYDRA was still out there, reborn and retreated once more into the shadows, and the only thing they could do now was survive. Survive and push forward and try and root out the threat once again. Time was cyclical, and they were right back at the start.

While Peggy was standing in a gulf in the middle, adversity behind her and nothing but potential in front. She and Howard had a plan. They had a vision, and nothing was going to stop them from achieving it. Not the government, not corporate greed, not the military’s insistence on including dubious participants, and certainly not the ghosts that they were still having to face.

Natasha sighed, hand still settled on the rumble that was one the original Wall of Valor, the names obscured by dust and blast damage, the new and old symbols gouged to where they were barely legible, barely visible. Only one small section seemed untouched from the damage, and Natasha couldn’t help but be amused at exactly which section it was.

Bucky Barnes. Steve Rogers. The only two names to place on the stone slab, the only reason it had been placed in the entry hall of the building. Peggy had pushed for a more elaborate memorial, a public memorial, but the government hadn’t budged. Captain Rogers had done a great service to the country, and Sergeant Barnes had lost his life to make sure that their cause was forwarded. But they were just men. Two men among millions who had lost their lives in the fighting, and it hadn’t seemed logical or practical to memorialize them separate of everyone else. So she and Howard had decided to do what they could, what they could do what they could themselves, and while the stone slab in the entrance hall of the SSR, soon to be SHIELD, headquarters wasn’t much, it was enough. It was enough for those who mattered to remember them.

But there were so many more to remember now, more names than could be easily etched into a wall, more lives lost than they could ever find time for separately, and while Natasha carried them, each of them, particularly those she’d known, those whose records still listed them as MIA in the rubble of the Triskelion, or those field operatives who had never made it back from their assignments once the information blast had hit the internet, there would never be a tangible reminder like this to their fallen ever again. They would instead be carried in hearts and minds, in their convictions, and their actions. They had lived without memorials at the beginning. They could live without them now.

And yet, there was a reassurance in seeing the burden you had been carrying written in stone, a solid reminder that while they were gone, they impact they made would never truly fade.

_“Are you ready?” Two voices ring out in different times. Clint Barton and Howard Stark watch, silently, as their respective partners turn from the monument and look up, nodding a quiet assent to the question._

_They have a lot of work ahead of them and not a lot of time to get it right._


End file.
